cultivation was introduced into Kangra about 1850. The Palampur fair, established by government with a view to fostering commerce with central Asia, attracts a small concourse of Yarkandi merchants. The Lahulis carry on an enterprising trade with Ladakh and countries beyond the frontier, by means of pack sheep and goats. Rice, tea, potatoes, opium, spices, wool and honey are the chief exports.
See Kangra District Gazetteer (Lahore, 1906).
KANISHKA, king of Kabul, Kashmir, and north-western
India in the 2nd century A.D., was a Tatar of the Kushan tribe,
one of the five into which the Yue-chi Tatars were divided.
His dominions extended as far down into India as Madurā, and
probably as far to the north-west as Bokhāra. Private inscriptions
found in the Punjab and Sind, in the Yusufzai district and
at Madurā, and referred by European scholars to his reign, are
dated in the years five to twenty-eight of an unknown era. It is
the references by Chinese historians to the Yue-chi tribes before
their incursion into India, together with conclusions drawn from
the history of art and literature in his reign, that render the date
given the most probable. Kanishka’s predecessors on the throne
were Pagans; but shortly after his accession he professed himself,
probably from political reasons, a Buddhist. He spent vast sums
in the construction of Buddhist monuments; and under his
auspices the fourth Buddhist council, the council of Jālandhara
(Jullunder) was convened under the presidency of Vasumitra. At
this council three treatises, commentaries on the Canon, one on
each of the three baskets into which it is divided, were composed.
King Kanishka had these treatises, when completed and revised
by Aśvaghosha, written out on copper plates, and enclosed the
latter in stone boxes, which he placed in a memorial mound.
For some centuries afterwards these works survived in India;
but they exist now only in Chinese translations or adaptations.
We are not told in what language they were written. It was
probably Sanskrit (not Pali, the language of the Canon)—just
as in Europe we have works of exegetical commentary composed,
in Latin, on the basis of the Testament and Septuagint in Greek.
This change of the language used as a medium of literary intercourse
was partly the cause, partly the effect, of a complete revulsion
in the intellectual life of India. The reign of Kanishka
was certainly the turning-point in this remarkable change. It
has been suggested with great plausibility, that the wide extent
of his domains facilitated the incursion into India of Western
modes of thought; and thus led in the first place to the corruption
and gradual decline of Buddhism, and secondly to the gradual
rise of Hinduism. Only the publication of the books written
at the time will enable us to say whether this hypothesis—for at
present it is nothing more—is really a sufficient explanation of
the very important results of his reign. In any case it was a
migration of nomad hordes in Central Asia that led, in Europe,
to the downfall of the Roman civilization; and then, through the
conversion of the invaders, to medieval conditions of life and
thought. It was the very same migration of nomad hordes that
led, in India, to the downfall of the Buddhist civilization; and
subsequently, after the conversion of the Saka and Tatar
invaders, to medieval Hinduism. As India was nearer to the
starting-point of the migration, its results were felt there somewhat
sooner.
Authorities.—Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India (Oxford, 1908); “The Kushan Period of Indian History,” in J.R.A.S. (1903); M. Boyer, “L’Époque de Kaniska,” in Journal Asiatique (1900); T. Watters, On Yuan Chwang (London, 1904, 1905); J. Takakusu, “The Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma Books,” in Jour. of the Pali Text Soc. (1905), esp. pp. 118–130; Rhys Davids, Buddhist India (London, 1903), ch. xvi., “Kanishka.” (T. W. R. D.)
KANKAKEE, a city and the county-seat of Kankakee county,
Illinois, U.S.A., in the N.E. part of the state, on the Kankakee
river, 56 m S. of Chicago. Pop. (1900), 13,595, of whom
3346 were foreign-born; (1910 census), 13,986. Kankakee is
served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis, the
Illinois Central, and the Chicago, Indiana & Southern (controlled
by the New York Central) railways. It is the seat of the
Eastern Hospital for the Insane (1879) a state institution;
St Joseph’s Seminary (Roman Catholic) and a Conservatory
of Music. At Bourbonnais Grove, 3 m. N. of Kankakee is St
Viateur’s College (founded 1868), a well-known Roman Catholic
divinity school, and Notre Dame Academy, another Catholic
institution. The city has a public library and four large parks;
in Court House Square there is a monument erected by popular
subscription in honour of the soldiers from Kankakee county
who died in the Civil War. There are rock quarries here, and
the city manufactures sewing machines, musical instruments,
especially pianos, foundry and machine shop products, agricultural
implements and furniture. The total value of the
factory product in 1905 was $2,089,143, an increase of 222 %
since 1900. Kankakee is also a shipping point for agricultural
products. It was first settled in 1832; was platted as the town
of Bourbonnais in 1853, when Kankakee county was first
organized; was chartered as the city of Kankakee in 1855, and
was re-chartered in 1892.
KANKER, a feudatory state of India, within the Central
Provinces; area, 1429 sq. m.; pop. (1901), 103,536; estimated
revenue, £10,000. It is a hilly tract, containing the headwaters
of the Mahanadi. The extensive forests have recently been made
profitable by the opening of a branch railway. The residence
of the raja, who is of an old Rajput family though ruling over
Gonds, is at Kanker (pop. 3906).
KANO, one of the most important provinces of the British
protectorate of Northern Nigeria. It includes the ancient
emirates of Kano, Katsena, Daura and Kazaure, and covers an
area of about 31,000 sq. m. The sub-province of Katagum was
incorporated with Kano in 1905, and is included within this area.
The population of the double province is estimated at about
2,250,000.
Kano was one of the original seven Hausa states. Written annals carry the record of its kings back to about A.D. 900. Legendary history goes back much further. It was conquered by the Songhoi (Songhay) in the early part of the 16th century, and more than once appears to have made at least partial submission to Bornu. Mahommedanism was introduced at a period which, according to the system adopted for the dating of the annals, must be placed either in the 12th or the 14th century. The Hausa system of government and taxation was adopted by the Fula when in the early part of the 19th century that Mahommedan people overran the Hausa states. It has been erroneously stated that the Fula imposed Mahommedanism on the Hausa states. The fact that they adopted the existing system of government and taxation, which are based upon Koranic law, would in itself be sufficient proof that this was not the case. But the annals of Kano distinctly record the introduction and describe the development of Mahommedanism at an early period of local history.
The capital is the city of Kano, situated in 12° N. and 8° 20′ E., 220 m. S.S.E. of Sokoto and 500 N.E. of Lagos. It is built on an open plain, and is encompassed by a wall 11 m. in perimeter and pierced by thirteen gates. The wall is from 30 to 50 ft. high and about 40 ft. thick at the base. Round the wall is a deep double ditch, a dwarf wall running along its centre. The gates are simply cow-hide, but are set in massive entrance towers. Only about a third of the area (714 sq. m.) enclosed by the walls is inhabited nor was the whole space ever occupied by buildings, the intention of the founders of the city being to wall in ground sufficient to grow food for the inhabitants during a siege. The arable land within the city is mainly on the west and north; only to the south-east do the houses come right to the walls. Within the walls are two steep hills, one, Dala, about 120 ft. high being the most ancient quarter of the town. Dala lies north-west. To its east is a great pond, the Jakara, 112 m. long, and by its north-east shore is the market of the Arab merchants. Here also was the slave market. The palace of the emir, in front of which is a large open space, is in the Fula quarter in the south-east of the city. The palace consists of a number of buildings covering 33 acres and surrounded by a wall 20 to 30 ft. high. The architecture of the city is not without merit. The houses are built of clay with (generally) flat roofs impervious to fire. Traces of Moorish influence are evident and the horseshoe arch is common. The
